Leap Brief Resumes of Key Staff
Timothy Bellevia is an accomplished visual artist who has taught from Leap since 1998.
Mr. Bellevia holds a Bachelor of Science in Art Education from Roberts Wesleyan
College and a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. He also attended the Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture and participated in the C.E.O. (Creative Enterprise
Ownership) Program at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Mr. Bellevia is a certified
arts education teacher (K-12), and is currently an Adjust Professor for the Touro College
Graduate School of Education. Since 2000, his illustrations have been published in four
children’s books including We Are All the Same Inside (2000) and Sage Goes to
Kindergarten (2006).
Vivian P.J. Clarke, Ed..D., C.H.E.S., is currently senior faculty in the Department of
Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University. Dr. Clarke is the
founder of the Masters of Public Health program at New York University and served as
the program director for 20 years, and chairperson of the Department for 16 years. Dr.
Clarke’s professional area of expertise, including publications, is health promotion and
disease prevention, particularly substance abuse prevention and women’s health issues.
Additionally, she is certified Early Childhood Education, Special Education, and
University Level Instruction & Curriculum Development.
Ila Lane Gross, Executive Director of Leap. Ms. Gross co-founded Leap with Alice
Krieger in 1977 after working as both an artist and a public school teacher in New York
City. Since then, they have expanded Leap from a small, volunteer-run program to an
established nonprofit organization serving 200,000 students in 300 schools throughout
the New York metropolitan area. Ms. Gross has been creating and administering arts
education programs for over 28 years. She designs and directs a variety of innovative
programs, most recently Active Learning Leads to Literacy, a federally-funded research
project in early childhood literacy. She is the author of elementary and middle school
curricula, including Global Understanding – Cultural Literacy, Understanding History
through Art and City as History (both funded by the National Endowment for the
Humanities). Ms. Gross has taught graduate courses on archeology and American history,
and is a frequent presenter at regional and national conferences. She received her M.Ed.
from Columbia Teacher’s College.
Alice Krieger, co-founder and Associate Executive Director of Leap. Ms. Krieger
oversees and supervises Leap programs in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Long
Island. Ms. Krieger trains and coordinates a staff of 200 teaching artists, designs and
initiates new programs, develops curriculum materials and publications, coordinates and
leads teacher and parent workshops, presents at conferences, and documents Leap’s
programs. She has designed and supervised programs for the NYCPAE Initiative, Project
Arts, Project Read, Early Childhood, ESL/Bilingual, Talented and Gifted, Violence
Prevention, and Substance Abuse. Her participation in conferences has included
presentations on parent involvement for the Administration for Children’s Services and
staff development for the Partnership for Afterschool Education. Ms. Krieger is a
member of the Board of Directors of the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable.
She attended Northwestern University and graduated from Mills College with a B.A. in
Art History. She also attended Bank Street College of Education and Columbia
Teacher’s College.
Robert G. Malgady is a Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Program
in Research and Evaluation, at New York University. He holds a B.A. in Psychology
from Rutgers College, and a Ph.D. in Psychology and Statistics from the University of
Tennessee. He is a member of the American Psychological Association, and is also a
member of several national panels and editorial boards including Cultural Diversity and
Ethnic Minority Psychology, Psychological Assessment, ANN Casey Foundation, and the
NIMH Panel on Hispanic Reproduction. He has written four books and has contributed
journal articles or chapters to 90 publications.
Brooke O’Harra is an NEA Theatre Communications Group grantee and director of
experimental theatre. She has been working with young people since her undergraduate
days in Lafayette College’s English department, where she tutored other students in
writing. After earning her M.F.A. at Tulane University, Ms. O’Harra went on to teach
acting and writing in a variety of settings, most recently at NYU. She is the co-founder
of the NYC based collaborative Theatre of the Two-Headed Calf, for which she has
directed numerous well-reviewed productions. The New York Times has said that there
is “something true and real that shines out from director Brooke O’Harra’s [work].”
During her two years studying theatre in Japan, she was a performer with a company
specializing in the Japanese modern dance form of butoh, and ran an independent street
theatre company. She has directed plays in New York City, Ithaca, New Orleans, and
Tokyo and is the co-author of Writing with the Lights On: From Sentences to
Paragraphs. She has been a teaching artist for Leap since 2001, conducting dynamic
workshops in Drama, Writing, and Math, and bringing hands-on, arts-based learning into
the lives of diverse students.
Liza Papi holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the City College of New York. She
has lectured and led workshops in Brazilian art and dance at the Solomon Guggenheim
Museum and is the recipient of grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the New York
Foundation for the Arts, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. She has shown her work at
Varig’s Icaro Room Gallery and City College Gallery in New York and the Museum of
Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, among many others.
Jim Pugliese, a teaching artist who has worked with LEAP for over 20 years, and has
mentored LEAP staff for 10 years, has extensive music performance, recording, and
teaching experience. Mr. Pugliese has worked with or performed under
composer/conductors John Cage, Philip Glass, Carlos Chavez, and Lukas Foss. His
compositions have been performed at the Knitting Factory, Dance Theater Workshop,
Symphony Space, and Lincoln Center Outdoor Festival. Mr. Pugliese has developed
extensive music education programs as an artist-in-residence. He has taught his “Music
and Culture” course to New York City schools for over 25 years.